Browsing the web on 98/ME in 2019 and beyond

[Bruninho]

I saw this video. Unfortunately, it's in brazilian portuguese, I hope the youtube auto-generated captions can help you guys. I tried what he did and I failed too. I don't know if the video is true or false, or if it's missing something. I am trying to contact him to find out more.
 

He installls older KernelEx (?!?!), Java 2 SE Runtimes, Qt OpenSource, and some strange files for an unknown Opera 12.00 distribution.
I followed his steps for my Win 98SE virtual machine, and it didn't work. If he doesn't return my messages, hopefully you guys can help to investigate this.

It's 3:20AM right now here, and I need some well deserved sleep. Good night!

[Goodmaneuver]

Loblo, the transparency program created a Rat Hole in the desk top so I removed it and a bit hard to get back. I uploaded a recycle bin transparent icon for example instead. It is RP9 but not all functioning here.

The web site in the above video does not have the files where he gets them from.

Edited March 15, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[Bruninho]

36 minutes ago, Goodmaneuver said:

Loblo, the transparency program created a Rat Hole in the desk top so I removed it and a bit hard to get back. I uploaded a recycle bin transparent icon for example instead. It is RP9 but not all functioning here.

The web site in the above video does not have the files where he gets them from.

Here: https://drive.google.com/drive/mobile/folders/1EknJjtNIrj75HpJL5mKR_jEtc2xY6aYH

he replied to me, his method doesn’t work anymore since Youtube started with that yellow banner, I suspect its the same problem that affected browsers in XP, related to polymer versions. I told him to try out user agent switchers.

[Goodmaneuver]

You do not need new browsers just yet with YouTube so I do not think it has anything to do with changing UA as if using too high a UA then the page does not render correctly: - with CometBird9 mainly whitish areas so the server is sending back the shorthand version of the page; that new HTML version. I had a look at his files and I think it was a co-incidence that it worked when he tested it. Opera still worked on certain highly viewed videos and once going, auto loading next video kept on working. The problem with this was I did not want to watch what was being feed. I tested a month or two ago. Once I left it sitting not playing then an ad started up and yes it worked but I could not repeat this and only plays what is in the video feed line.

Edited March 15, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[loblo]

2 hours ago, Goodmaneuver said:

Loblo, the transparency program created a Rat Hole in the desk top so I removed it and a bit hard to get back. I uploaded a recycle bin transparent icon for example instead. It is RP9 but not all functioning here.

The web site in the above video does not have the files where he gets them from.

Sorry but I have not the faintest idea of what  you're talking about.

[Bruninho]

I've moved back to the 4.5.2 KernelEx and installed NET 2.0, VC6, VC2005, VC2008. Now I am going to try and find damn working browser... again. And a good VLC version to install. And codecs. Let's start all over again and see if I am not missing something.

IMO KernelEx updates are useless without a proper tutorial on how to update properly it by yourself, and I don't see anything higher than Windows 2000 apps working for the foreseeable future on Windows 98. Even vanilla Windows 2000 cannot browse the web or youtube without issues. But When BWC Kex enters the game, Windows 2000 comes back to life again.

[siria]

Bruninho said:
> I don't see anything higher than Windows 2000 apps working for the foreseeable future on Windows 98

Since many years a lot of XP apps work (more or less) on Win98 with basic KernelEx. Especially those who are intentionally blocked by their authors for no other reason as having no opportunity to check compatibility themselves. And what's really annoying, again and again based merely on the wrong claim that Win98 couldn't handly ANY unicode! As if Win98 would have been stuck at very first edition forever, even without any MS updates. While funnily no one insist that apps were "not compatible with XP" just because they need SP2 or SP3.
Of course some XP-apps really work only partly on Win98, but that's already a lot better as "not at all".

Bruninho said:
> K-Meleon 74 Goanna could also be an option, if it was a very stable browser without UI issues.
> Actually, I could install K-Meleon and try more, if only the UI wasn't THAT ugly.
> I can't understand why K-Meleon 1.6 (or 1.5.4?) has no UI problems but 74 does?

KMG74 sure has huge GUI Bugs on Win98, causing lots of crashing, not suitable as main browser. But can you elaborate what parts you mean with "ugly"? Just wondering because this sounds like "skin", but not sure...?
If you do mean skins: no prob. The default skin is the same in KM1.6 and 74. The old Phoenity in KM1.5 was replaced with Aura in KM1.6 already, and this new one was technically slightly downgraded, the variation system messed, because it wasn't done by the main dev but a community supporter who didn't care for it. And additionally all button transparency was now "partial", which doesn't work on Win98 anymore. Producing such nice effects as the PrivacyToolbar, one of KM's greatest features since forever, having black text on black background on Win98... Grmpf. Compeletely unnecessary.
But that's no prob - just copy over the old Phoenity folders from KM1.5 into newer versions. The old skins are still fully compatible even in the newest KM-versions. Then restart and choose it in F2>GUI. Or install a different skin, or extra toolbars, or modify it yourself.

[Bruninho]

Yes, skin. I'll try that with KM74, it's the last shot before giving up.

No matter which browser I use, when I go to html5test.com, they all report to me that there is no MPEG-4, H.264, H.265 and WebM with VP9 support codecs. Even though I had installed K-Lite Codec Pack 6.90 Full. When I go to w3schools HTML5 video test, every browser plays the video. I have only Ogg Theora and VP8 support. I'm amazingly p***ed at how hard it is to get codecs right on Windows 98.

Frankly, codec detection is buggy on Windows 98. Even HTML5test.com says so.

Let's see how KM goes before I shut down the VM for good and move back to my successfull Windows 2000 VM.

[siria]

Bruninho said:
> I'm amazingly p***ed at how hard it is to get codecs right on Windows 98.
> Frankly, codec detection is buggy on Windows 98. Even HTML5test.com says so.

For me it's not very urgent to play videos directly in the browser, as long as I can download youtube videos and play them with a media player. Which seems much lighter anyway. The last years felt not much need to get any other videos at all, but probably possible to download more with 3rd-party services, perhaps the one I posted above (didn't test that in a long while)

Oops, almost forgot: of course I'm downloading other videos too! Just rarely, and not as easy as youtube, and often un-successful. Oh well. Haven't tried services for this task yet, perhaps will when getting urgent enough. Usually so far only try to find a full mp4-link in the page source, if lucky with the help of macros, and best if the url is simply in the meta "og:url"

But if you CAN run Win2000 and are happy with it, I wouldn't waste so much time struggling with win98 either :-)

Edited March 16, 2020 by siria

[Bruninho]

55 minutes ago, siria said:

Bruninho said:
> I'm amazingly p***ed at how hard it is to get codecs right on Windows 98.
> Frankly, codec detection is buggy on Windows 98. Even HTML5test.com says so.

For me it's not very urgent to play videos directly in the browser, as long as I can download youtube videos and play them with a media player. Which seems much lighter anyway. The last years felt not much need to get any other videos at all, but probably possible to download more with 3rd-party services, perhaps the one I posted above (didn't test that in a long while)

Oops, almost forgot: of course I'm downloading other videos too! Just rarely, and not as easy as youtube, and often un-successful. Oh well. Haven't tried services for this task yet, perhaps will when getting urgent enough. Usually so far only try to find a full mp4-link in the page source, if lucky with the help of macros, and best if the url is simply in the meta "og:url"

But if you CAN run Win2000 and are happy with it, I wouldn't waste so much time struggling with win98 either :-)

Indeed. I remember when I had Windows 98 in the past, I didn't watch videos on my browser at all (just rarely, I remember watching a racing video accident in a browser as a kid, but I dunno if it was in 1998, 1999 or 2002), but I expected to at least be able to have a decent web browsing experience and be able to play them straight to VLC in some way. This is not what exactly I am experiencing after having tried numerous browser versions and coming to the conclusion that Retrozilla is the only decent experience. Even VLC versions installed fails to load the video URLs. RetroZilla can't render well most pages anyway, but is better than all browsers that I have tried (except Opera 12.02). If only Opera had updated cipher suites, then I'd not need RetroZilla at all, just Opera with a script to load videos on VLC.

I'll definitely destroy the VM and stick with Windows 2000, since the browsing experience with SeaMonkey 2.49.5 is excellent (as of now. I can imagine Youtube's current moves will kill it too in the future).

BTW I've tried KM74 and it crashed on me trying to load Youtube page. At least your trick for skin change worked.

[siria]

> BTW I've tried KM74 and it crashed on me trying to load Youtube page

No crashes here on youtube.
The usual bugs probably:
did you copy over the 3 files needed with modern KernelEx for httpS domains from an older profile?
Or the other bug: first loaded a local page, then a web page?

Edited March 16, 2020 by siria

[siria]

Hmm... perhaps there's still some hope for Opera12 with better TLS?

I don't get any of this, far too complicated and technical, but perhaps anyone else:
https://forums.opera.com/topic/5372/opera-12-17-no-longer-works-with-https-for-me/31
Huh?? Mozilla....?
"Older versions of Opera (versions 9.5 through 12) use Opera's online root store. Until fall 2013, the online solution was built on Opera's root store program, but after that it is based on NSS by Mozilla."

Some Opera setting-tips for Win98:
http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?1,145647
Disabling OCSP allows to load more sites
On the other hand it can slow down browsing, even extremely

[Goodmaneuver]

Loblo, as you can see the recycle bin icon is transparent. This is code written by Tihiy that utilizes the extra functions in User32.dll unique to Win98/ME. See https://msfn.org/board/topic/131040-revolutions-pack-97/?do=findComment&comment=842079 If code is written for WinXP then KernelEx may need XP setting for the transparency to work. This is what I experienced with the program that produced a Rathole in the desktop. Opera does not run with XP settings though. Rathole.exe was a game/program that produced a small square location in the display released in WinNT that the mouse pointer and everything else disappeared when over the small square. 

Edited March 16, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[Goodmaneuver]

I can not post or update on MSFN forum now with Opera 12. Can other members still use Win98/ME for posting here still with Opera 12? I think that Mozilla and Opera intertwine in the Registry settings and this is what might have happened to my build or server changes again. Other thing I have to watch is reg settings transferring to the wrong drive when rebooting. BIOS is responsible with this. Usually from IDE to SCSI if drives are too similar.

"Opera was trialware and had to be purchased after the trial period ended. Version 5.0 (released in 2000) saw the end of this requirement. Instead, Opera became ad-sponsored, displaying advertisements to users who had not paid for it. Later versions of Opera gave the user the choice of seeing banner ads or targeted text advertisements from Google." Wiki. Opera 12 is still supported with latest update 12.18 2016. Opera 12 is a good mail client and can access all mail servers at the moment, that is it downloads all mail. Ironic though when I go to get more info some web servers/ports may not allow access. Mozilla client is now a good choice also with Roytam's files.

Corrected, I restored registry back a few days, used only one HDD, reinstalled an Opera backup copy and I can post again in MSFN. So ignore first paragraph about it.

Edited March 16, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[Goodmaneuver]

It is the embedded video again on page 16 that upsets posting here. It did work last time I edited post though. Posted this from page 15.